


brief hours and weeks

by meanderingsoul



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Courtship, Dancing, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Feelings Realization, Hugs, Introspection, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 18:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17431349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: The answer came in the usual sudden insight, like turning a page after a pause.





	brief hours and weeks

 

It’d taken Jack a while to realize he might actually be able to do this. Not just to love her, but all the rest of it.

The lines had blurred early on. He could realize that now, though he’d avoided knowing it for almost a year. There’d been a certain level of flirtation required to simply _talk_ to her, and he’d been charmed despite himself. By her surprisingly self-aware arrogance, her quick mind, the stunning depth of kindness and feeling she hid under careless gestures and a swirl of expensive colours.

But even as professionalism had turned to lingering over drinks, to the flimsiest of excuses to share time together during cases, even besides the pall of his impending divorce, always in the back of his mind before had been _she doesn’t want this from you_. From anyone, you know that. She doesn’t want _this_. She doesn’t want _you_ for more than the thrill of the night, though Jack knew her well enough by that point to know she’d never be intentionally cruel about it.

But none of that was true anymore, not the parts of it that mattered.

Now there were  _intentions_.

He’d left the warmth of her parlor indecently late that night, not for the first time, but it was different with the bottle of wine he’d brought empty on the table. Different, curled on the chaise with her knees tucked warm against his thigh instead of with the usual shred of space left between them.

They’d talked for hours, intimate words, less talk of their profession or law or literature than was their usual. Stories he didn’t exactly want to hear but she’d needed to tell him. Memories he’d never shared with her before. A lingering brush of hands as they quietly pilfered her kitchen for bread and cheese after half the bottle, her household long asleep.

It wasn’t the first time they’d stood far too close in her front hall, or that her hands had reached for his waist, but it had been the first time he’d closed that distance, wrapped both his arms around her, his hip brushing her belly and his palm on her shoulder.

Finally, _finally_  he held her.

She’d leaned up a little, probably expecting or maybe hoping for a kiss, but after a moment she’d set her cheek against his breast with a little hum and wound both arms around him in return.

Jack had swayed them a bit, brushed the lightest kiss against her hair, tried to remember his heart couldn’t actually burst from the feeling.

He’d felt her dark eyes lingering on him until he’d turned the corner of her street, the touch of her hands against his jacket taking even more liberties than usual, the quiet _goodnight Phryne_ lingering in his mouth.

And while that night had eased much of the nervous ache in his heart, it hadn’t given him much to work with as far as a next step.

There was no longer any level on which he could deny being in love for the second time in his life. Jack couldn’t bear to turn away from it, he’d tried, and knowing finally beyond doubt of her genuine care in return it was suddenly the easiest thing to be patient while she figured out what she needed from them. For them. From him.

But patient wasn’t the same as idle. He wasn’t planning dates to get to know her better. Jack had known few people in his life he knew so well as her. He wasn’t thinking through a proposal, because wherever it was they were heading now it wouldn’t be that. But at the end of the day, he _was_ still courting her.

Now it was just going to be on purpose, not him pretending it was really something innocuous or something lesser than it was. No prevarications or doubts or pretenses.

Jack found himself staring at the walls late at night, contemplating some sort of overture, something romantic that would still suit them and everything they already were. Something that was _not_ an intimate dinner, they’d already made two disastrous attempts recently. Best to wait. He tried to remember times he had impressed her that had nothing to do with murder cases, to remember times she had been happy in his company, things other than the unholy delight she seemed to take in discovering another of his hobbies.

The answer came in the usual sudden insight, like turning a page after a pause.

Jack could impress the London socialite; he had done it before, even the temporary sort of gentleman as he had been. He could please Phryne’s magpie mind, their shared work and his myriad interests that had never worked quite so much in his favor before. And a worn old soldier held few ugly surprises for a sleepless ambulance driver, though he still hadn’t told her that months ago he’d found the false given name she’d used to get there.

But there were more than a few simple layers to her person and apparently it was the Collingwood girl whose head he turned.

Jack had assumed before that it was her general joie de vivre, carefully cultivated, that accounted for her delight when they’d had occasion to do things that under non-murderous circumstances could have been very normal dates.

Her glee at clinging to his arm, overdressed on the beach and overfamiliar little fingers on his bicep, grinning up at him when he bought them fish and chips. Walking through the clown’s grotesque mouth into Luna Park with her on his arm. Something in her voice when she’d offered to buy him an ice-cream, as if the small coins in her pocket were just as significant as the small fortune of emeralds she’d used to bait their jewel thief.

Much of it was simply her vibrant nature, but the rest… Well.

The Collingwood girl who’d never had a nice fella seemed to be quite happy to be stepping out with a working man from South Richmond.

Jack knew how to work with that, for now at least.

The first real opportunity was a shabby ballroom, the afternoon sun enough to put some gleam back in the room, empty save for them and silent save for the music and the shush of their feet across the floor.

It was a forgotten kind of bliss, her warm torso tucked against the crook of his arm while they moved together like one creature. But none of that was quite so good as the surprised pleasure on her face, her silent nod when he asked if he should turn the disc over, dance a few more songs.

Jack kissed her fingers because if he kissed her soft cheek like he wanted to it wouldn’t stop there, too close to the sweetness of her mouth.

And that afternoon had been perfect. It’d been _so perfect_. Slipping out the back door afterwards, ducking into a dim café he remembered from a few blocks over for lunch, arm in arm again. Holding her hand under the table like a much younger man. The brief, warm embrace just inside her front gate, hidden from the street by the vines.

The way she’d ducked to hide her smile, spinning away towards her front door.

Jack catches himself staring unseeingly at the station’s battered spoon in his teacup, smiling at the walls of his kitchen for the rest of the week. He couldn’t even muster up any embarrassment about it.

He kept that understanding in his mind, even when it came time for grander gestures, for time spent with the London sort-of socialite who seemed determined to impress _him_. Even when they'd returned to the realm of bloody photographs on the table between them and her sharpest smile.

Jack remembered the weight it would carry, hand in hand at another footy match, the finely-knit Collingwood scarf around her neck while she laughed. The first time he cut her flowers from his garden. Playing the piano for her in her parlor, Claire de Lune with her head heavy against his shoulder.

A long, long time later they sat on the beach late one night at the end of a grueling week, their feet in the water and a bottle of beer shared between them. He’d knocked on her bedroom window where he knew she wouldn’t be sleeping, asked if she wanted to go for a walk.

They’d been quiet since they’d finally sat down, her legs gleaming pale in the wine-dark sea.

When it was his turn for a drink, she took his hand and squeezed, staring out at the water.

“No one ever really did this stuff with me, before.”

Jack smiled. “I know.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The change in Jack's manner from the end of 3x3 to the beginning of 3x4 fascinates me, and I never can quite decide how I want that bottle-of-wine conversation to go. 
> 
> Title is from Sonnet 116. I had to. Jack's, of course, a Shakespeare nerd and apparently has a wordy inner monologue when I write him.
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


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